Pre-paid long distance accounts have become ubiquitous in the United States and around the world. In particular, pre-paid long distance accounts are used by individuals who have travelled from a foreign country, or have relatives, acquaintances or business associates in a foreign country, and have a need for frequent long distance telephone communications the foreign country. Such individuals, for a variety of reasons, are generally not able to, or may not desire to, establish a traditional “land line” telephone account or a contract with a long distance carrier.
Such relationships, for example, usually require credit histories and long-established presence in the country where the account is being set up. In addition, certain long distance callers are concerned with privacy and prefer to make payments for long distance accounts using cash, something that is generally not available in a traditional long distance account. Moreover, establishing a land line may require a permanent residential address which is difficult, if not impossible, for individuals who are only temporarily in the country where the account is being established.
To service these types of customers, many telecommunications providers purchase long distance minutes from international carriers at wholesale prices and re-sell them to their customers, primarily through pre-paid long distance accounts. Pre-paid long distance accounts, require advance payment from the user, which payment is credited to the user account for later use to make telephone calls. Because these accounts are prepaid, credit checks and residential addresses are not necessary, and cash payments are commonly accepted.
The traditional pre-paid account provides to the user, in exchange for a pre-payment which is credited to the user's account, a provider access telephone number (or “local access” number) with a local or toll-free area code, and account number and a (optionally for additional security) personal identification number (“PIN”), the last two being unique to the user. More recently, “pinless” systems have become common in which instead of using a PIN, the system is able to confirm that the correct user is utilizing the account by decoding the caller's originating number through use of the caller identification (“Caller-ID” or “CID”) service.
In order to initiate a call using a traditional pre-paid account, the user dials the provider access number, when prompted keys in (or speaks) the account number and PIN (or optionally the caller's Caller-ID number is decoded), and, upon verification of the user's available balance of minutes or dollars, the user is prompted to enter the long distance phone number that the user wishes to dial. The long distance call is then placed by the provider and the user is switched out of the provider access circuit and on to the long distance call. At the conclusion of the call, or sometimes in real-time during the call, the user's account is charged by deducting minutes or dollars.
Of course, if at the outset of the call the user does not have a sufficient minimum balance to place the call, the provider may refuse to place the call until the user replenishes the account with sufficient funds. Similarly, if the user runs out of credits during the call, the call may be disconnected or temporarily placed on hold while the user replenishes the account.
Although these accounts resolve the need for having traditional accounts with long distance carriers, they come at a cost in loss of convenience. To wit, rather than simply dialing the desired long distance number, the user must dial the access number, account number and (optionally) PIN, in addition to the long distance number. Not only are there many numbers to dial but the user often may not remember the numbers and may have to refer to notes or cards to recall them.
What's more, because making the call requires interaction with operators or automated response systems, it is often impossible to program the user's phone's “speed dial” feature to automatically enter the digits. This means that the user must memorize the long distance number or rely on an address book to recall the number.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial for a user to assign a local “alias” number to an often-dialed long distance number. Assignment of a local alias number could provide convenience if the pre-paid long distance system were able to automatically recognize, from the alias number dialed, the account from which the call was originating and the long distance number to be dialed. Such a system would not require the user to dial account numbers, PINs or long distance numbers. In addition, the alias number could be stored as a speed dial number by the user and enjoy a much greater level of convenience. The experience would, in fact, be nearly identical to making a local telephone call, while enjoying all the benefits of a pre-paid long distance account.
In addition to providing convenience, such a system would streamline the pre-paid account providers operations because the caller would only be required to be on the provider access circuit for a very short time before being switched to the long distance call. This would, in turn, significantly increase the provider's capacity to handle calls without requiring any additional provider access lines as well as reduce the costs for the operator who pays for such lines based on use by its customers.
Another benefit of such a system would be to significantly reduce the number of misdialed long distance calls. Many providers refund customers for misdialed calls and their avoidance can translate into to better network efficiency, quality of service and a cost saving to the provider and customer.
The assignment of local “alias” numbers to correspond to long distance numbers has been previously attempted. However, it has not met with commercial success because the process of assigning aliases has traditionally been complicated, often requiring a personal computer or computer terminal, internet access and/or a human operator to effect. The present invention resolves these problems by providing a system that automatically assigns local “alias” numbers to long distance numbers for pre-paid accounts without any additional input or interaction from the user or an operator and without the need of a personal computer or a computer terminal, or access to the internet.
These and other objects, features, and advantages of the present invention may be more clearly understood and appreciated from a review of ensuing detailed description of the preferred and alternate embodiments and by reference to the accompanying drawings and claims.